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Editing as a Brand Investment

Pages from a recent issue of Acne Paper, with a photograph by Julia Hetta.Credit
Acne Paper

“Why spend €40,000 a page to advertise in Vogue when, for the same amount of money, you can publish an entire magazine?” asked Alice Litscher, a professor in fashion communication at the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris.

Brand-financed magazines — not glorified catalogs or vanity glossies but serious niche publications with top-notch editors and contributors — became something of a fad during the last decade. Now, in a tense business atmosphere where every cent is guarded, some fashion businesses say the publications (and their new online versions) have been excellent marketing investments.

“The consumer is much more likely to engage with independent editorial content than with conventional, purely product-focused advertising,” said Max Vallot, marketing director of BLK DNM, which introduced the jeans brand and a magazine at the same time last May. “It’s much harder to differentiate a brand through product than through advertising today, which is why we’re investing in new ways of ‘advertising.”’

The publication, a black-and-white tabloid called Gazette, includes several art and photo spreads, a narrative on a dinner with the photographers Peter Lindbergh and Jerry Schatzberg — and almost no denim. It is distributed free with online orders, while customers at the brand’s New York boutique are invited to pay whatever they like, with proceeds going to charity.

This publication approach “indirectly gives texture to a brand, creates a feeling, an environment,” said Johan Lindeberg, the brand’s creative director and the founder of the clothing brand J. Lindeberg.

On a practical note, the publication, at 5,000 copies, was a “more cost-efficient communication tool for us than a comprehensive seasonal advertising campaign at this point,” Mr. Vallot added.

The Swedish brand Acne took a similar approach in 2006 and says it has paid off. The company never advertised, instead investing in Acne Paper, a twice-yearly publication that doesn’t mention its men’s and women’s collections at all. Instead, the editors say, it communicates the company’s general values through its choice of cultural content and its clean-cut appearance.

“We meet people from various fields who know of the Paper and not of the clothes, which is the best result one could hope for,” said Mikael Schiller, the company’s chairman.

Thomas Persson, editor in chief of the Paper, said, “Think of what the return is for Cartier to do the Cartier Foundation or Prada and their foundation.”

Mr. Persson sees Acne as akin to a patron of the arts and says the publication has proved itself to be a more organic and efficient mode of communication than traditional advertising. Paper sells for €10, or about $13, at selected locations and generally exhausts its 25,000-copy press run in two months.

“We are doing this in the format of this magazine to spend money on a project that helps build great creative relationships and at the same time sends out a message that people all over the world respond very positively to,” Mr. Persson said.

The publication’s next step is online. Mr. Persson said a “Web presence” was still being developed and, while the content was being discussed, it may be different from that of the magazine and would include a lot of video.

In the same online universe, Nowness, the cybermagazine begun by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton in 2010, has positioned itself as a virtual publication that hardly mentions its owner’s name.

“It is perceived as an independent media, and addresses the world of luxury in a nonpromotional way,” said Kamel Ouadi, its executive vice president.

Nowness says that its user figures — more than 300,000 registered users, and some videos reaching one million or more hits — are proof of its success.

While customers and potential customers are always an important audience, some companies say their publications have proved to have internal benefits as well.

For example, the retailer COS, a division of the Swedish company Hennes & Mauritz, says its free, tabloid-sized fashion-and-lifestyle publication and blog have inspired executives and employees.

“It works as a really strong branding tool internally,” said Mary Honda, who is in charge of the company’s brand development. “It helps us maintain a discussion about the evolution of the brand.”

In the case of Net-a-Porter, an online magazine and retail Web site, and Mr. Porter, its men’s wear magazine and retail site, the marketing clues that the sites produce have been invaluable.

“The Web offers advantages simply impossible with print: We can see how much a reader lingered on a page, what he skipped, and then what he bought,” said Jeremy Langmead, Mr. Porter’s editor in chief, who had held the same position at British Esquire but said he longed for the nimbleness of the digital world.

“We write about what we stock, but we stock what we like,” allowing for fluidity between editorial and commerce, he said. “This way, we can write what we believe about rather than what advertisers believe.”